Is that the basis of our fears? Does the concept of immortality haunt us precisely because we fear extinguishment, erasure, censure and being forgotten within a moment’s notice beyond the short mention in a local paper’s obituary? Is that not, instead, the normal course of events — the way in which this non-teleological universe meant it to be — of returning to dust from whence we came, and become regenerated through the soil that embraces our ashes and decomposed flesh so that the genetic materials become recycled by the very foods we digest?
Mortality is that which men fear; becoming immortal is the goal of many; but being forgotten is the fear realized in the lives of most. What difference, in the end, does it make?
We project an image through the creative imagination of our own psyche, and create images of a time beyond our own demise — of a weeping widow (or widower); children speaking in hushed tones of a person who was but is no longer around; and in our inkling of what it will be like, we posit our own consciousness by being present in a room that acknowledges our own absence. Is that what sweet revenge is like — of imagining all sorts of regrets by those who shunned us, humiliated and ignored us when we were in their presence in life?
To be forgotten is to regret our own insignificance, and to constantly be haunted by one’s own irrelevance.
For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, where the medical condition begins to prevent one’s ability and capacity to perform all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the issue of being forgotten becomes a reality quite quickly and soon in the process of deteriorating health and use of sick leave or going on FMLA.
For, Federal agencies and the Postal Service are quite adept at forgetting — forgetting the years of loyalty shown by the Federal or Postal employee; forgetting the years of service, unpaid overtime and those “extra” hours put in but left uncompensated but for unrealized hopes of future considerations that never come about; forgetting the contributions of yesterday because today and tomorrow are all that matters to the Federal agency or Postal Service; and it is when the word “forgetting” in the present participle transforms into the past participle of “forgotten” that we finally come to realize that health is of greater importance than loyalty; and that is when the recognition that preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, to be filed through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is the best defense against a bureaucracy that has easily forgotten the essence of human worth and dignity.
Sincerely,
Robert R. McGill, Esquire
OPM Disability Retirement, Et Cetera… 